Excavating equipment in normal use is subjected to conditions which cause significant wearing of the components. To lengthen the usable life of the equipment, wear caps have been secured over the surfaces experiencing the greatest amount of wear. For instance, wear caps have been provided along the walls of a dragline bucket as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. Re. 33,454 to Potter and U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,765 to Jones et al. Wear caps have also been used to cover exposed portions of an adapter such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,348 to Emrich, U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,532 to Hahn et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,131 to Emrich, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,667 to Martin.
Wear caps are frequently provided with a slot which is received over a tongue fixed to a wearable surface of the part to be protected. The slot is generally formed with a T-shaped configuration (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,532) or a dovetail configuration (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. Re. 33,454) to prevent the wear cap from being pulled away from the wearable surface. While a slot and tongue connection is sufficient to hold the wear cap to the wearable surface, it at times places undesirable constraints on the design of the wearable part. Specifically, the use of a slot and tongue connection to secure the wear cap requires the wearable surface to have a relatively flat or linear shape. Accordingly, as seen for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,532, the wearable surface of the adapter is built up to form a linear T-shaped tongue. This tongue construction requires the use of more material than would otherwise be required to provide the adapter with a sufficient level of strength.
Further, a tongue and slot connection generally requires the wear cap to be axially moved a considerable distance (up to 100% of its length) for installation and removal. Removal of a wear cap via a long sliding motion has proven to be very difficult when tightly compacted with soil fines. Further, such axial movement of the wear cap frequently requires the removal of other parts (e.g., points) in order to provide sufficient clearance.
Wear caps typically rely upon the attachment of another wear member to hold it in place. For example, the wear caps disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,335,532 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,667 are each held to its respective wearable surface by the attachment of a point to the adapter. As a result, the point must always be removed to replace a worn wear cap, even if the point itself does not need to be replaced. Further, this dependent mounting of the wear cap may cause both the wear cap and the point to be lost if the point should break during use. Also, the requirement to interconnect the two wear members results in a more difficult assembly process.